Luchezar Boyadjiev
On vacation. Friedrich the Great from Berlin

Printed 2005 by Boxan, Kassel

Invited to contribute a print to the graphic portfolio Love It or Leave It (EB66), Luchezar Boyadjiev chose a motif from his series On vacation … , which he had begun the previous year and which by now comprises around 80 works. The series is based on the simple gesture of digitally removing human figures – mostly male personalities from politics, the military or the nobility – from photographic images of public monuments, thus sending them “on vacation”. In this way, the public space is freed, at least temporarily and in the context of the work, from the political tensions that often flare up at the monuments.¹ Boyadjiev focuses primarily on the traditional form of representation of the equestrian statue, which can be found in cities all over the world. This gesture of retouching is also reminiscent of Stalin’s practice of making certain people, such as Leon Trotsky, disappear from important photographs, and in On vacation … becomes a tongue-in-cheek satire. With the offset print On vacation. Friedrich the Great from Berlin, Boyadjiev turns his attention to the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great, which stands on Unter den Linden in Berlin.
Text: Katrin Seemann

¹ Cf.. Luchezar Boyadjiev. Re-building the World of Images. 1991–2019, exhib. cat., ed. by MOMus–Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, 2020, p. 153.